


Definition

by omphalos



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Internal Monologue, M/M, POV First Person, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-06
Updated: 2009-12-06
Packaged: 2017-10-04 05:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphalos/pseuds/omphalos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stuck in his Initiative Cell, Ethan considers the only two meaningful lovers he's ever had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Definition

Aditi, Tiamat, Eris, Nyx, Te-po-te-kitea: call Her what you will, but my goddess is beautiful. Ah, that's such an inane word, don't you think? She is radiant, succulent, effervescent and delicious. Chaos, even the word is pleasurable on my tongue; it's a whispering caress of a sound. I worship Her. Well, She'd hardly be mine if I didn't.

She makes me hard; I'll admit it. The only woman who ever did.

Once I kissed Her name into every part of Rupert Giles' body. He doesn't know that, of course. He was far too much in denial of his true self even then to feel Her snaking Her way inside. She slithered around his own kundalini serpent where it curled at the base of his spine, and She whispered, 'Awake.'

And he did, for a while. He was glorious, my Ripper, back then. Laws were to be broken, extremes reached for, and Order torn asunder. That's how his name found him, you see.

But even then, he never understood Her.

Chaos is defined by Order in much the same way as shadow is defined by light, yang by yin, and completion by lack. If you care to understand one, you need only look at the other.

Rupert, these days, rather mulishly insists that Chaos equates with evil. He knows better really. He only says such things to annoy me... or rather to irritate that part of himself that looks not unlike me when it stands in the right light. Or shadow.

Chaos is not evil.

I, undoubtedly, can be a touch naughty at times, especially when around Rupert. Well, he does provoke me so. I'll confess then that I sometimes employ Chaos to malignant ends. But the evil, what there is of it, is all mine. Chaos Herself has no placement on the ethical axis. She simply is, like any other component of nature.

She's more than a mere component, of course. None of us would be here without Chaos. A world without Chaos would be perfect... and perfectly barren. Shame, that.

Chaos is life. Change, mutation, growth, evolution: they are all bright blooms nodding on stems grown from raw Chaos. Just a smidgen of the stuff, introduced by a curious deity into a sterile petri dish, and whoosh! Big-bang! The start of all things.

Let there be light, and sound and matter and planets and hot, sulphurous pools where molecules can become ever more complex until they start to reproduce, and life is born.

All thanks to the capital C. Brilliant. Is it really any surprise I feel the need to kneel occasionally?

Order is brittle and crystalline, geometric and symmetrical. It is perfect, pure, pristine... all those nasty 'p' words. Just can't help but spit when you say them, eh? Life, sweet things, is messy. _We_ are messy. And shouldn't we celebrate our imperfections? They're what let's us know we're alive, after all.

We humans with our animal instincts and barely understood emotions writhing whorishly beneath a thin sheet of intellect and civilisation. we're all children of Chaos, every one of us. Who do _you_ thank on Mothering Sunday?

Even Watchers are Her children, however much they struggle to sever the serpent from their spine. The best they can do is to drug it into insensibility with a narcotic of rote and tedium, but it's far from dead. Every once in a whimsy, I enjoy proving that to one particular Watcher.

Yes, I know. I know. But he's the yin to my yang, you see.

You can never have too much Chaos. Well, no, you can. Too much of any good thing is antithetical to life, after all. But it works, it cuts, both ways. A world underfed its vital nutrients of flux and tempest is a dying world. Order seeks an end to life, which it sees as no more than pollution within its mathematical paradigm. Static white noise, an irrelevant annoyance, a scum of dust collecting in the angles: that's us as far as Order's concerned.

Order really isn't very nice, you know.

No, Rupert, I can hear you, and you're wrong. You've always been wrong. You've rather made a career of it, you could say. It's always amused me, old mate, that if it were not for fools like you struggling to impose a faux status quo on the world, then there would be no need for crusaders like me to relight the fires you douse and free the beasts you cage.

Of course, you believe you're the crusader, don't you? And I'm the fool.

Bollocks to that, and that's exactly what you didn't have in the end -- bollocks. Chaos couldn't use you. You were a snivelling coward in Her eyes. Did you know that, Ripper? You were too scared of what was inside you to listen to your own instincts, so you sought refuge in the rules and stipulations of old men. The night was our time once, and now you hide from it, scared of the wild beasts found away from the firelight.

Those wild beasts were us, you sad git.

I really need to stop arguing with you when you're not here, don't I? But then, there's nothing else to do while I wait, so I might as well. You and Chaos, there can't be many men of my age whose life can be summed up so succinctly. Chaos is by far the most satisfying lover of the two of you. You seemed to take the 'always leave them wanting more' motto a little too closely to your locked down, shut away heart.

I hate you, you know. Yes, yes, I love you too. Always that. But it's nowhere near enough. Not now.

Do you know what they've been doing to me in here, and if so, do you think I deserve it? Or do you simply not care enough to find out? Well, guess what, I don't care anymore either. No, really.

Because tonight She's coming for me, and then I'm coming for you.

You see, I worked something out during the years here, the long, boring, painful years. All this time I thought I needed you to define me, and so I threw myself on your kicking boot and took the pain as proof of love. I made a lot of noise and was very naughty to get you to notice me because punishment was preferable to being ignored.

But now I know that you need me every bit as much as I need you. I'm a prat for not seeing it before; really, I am. Because Chaos may be defined by Order, but Order has no meaning without Chaos. It's nothing but a sterile futility without Her.

I give you meaning, mate, far more than those little girls of yours ever will or could. And this time, I'm going to make you see it because She's going to help me. You feel empty inside, don't you? Dead and numb. But you're not; the real you is merely dormant, and if you listen hard enough, Ripper, old chum, you will be able to hear Her whisper to you even now.

_'Awake.'_

**Author's Note:**

> Written somewhere around 2004.


End file.
